Education Specialist (ECD), NOC, FT, #138603, Paramaribo, Suriname, Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean
- Organisation: UNICEF
- Location: Suriname, Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean
- Deadline: 11 November 2026
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For every child, the right to education
UNICEF’s Caribbean Multi-Country Office (MCO) serves twelve English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. As part of UNICEF's Future Focus Initiative, the Caribbean MCO brings together policy influence, technical expertise and strategic partnerships to advance results for children across the region through one integrated programme, one management structure and a shared pool of resources. The Multi-Country Programme 2027-2031 focuses on three shared outcomes: equitable access to primary health care, learning and skills; protection of children from all forms of violence; and child poverty reduction and resilience strengthening.
Children across the Caribbean face interconnected challenges including learning losses, mental health concerns, violence, child poverty and increasing exposure to climate-related disasters. Despite many countries being classified as upper-middle or high income, significant inequalities persist, particularly for vulnerable children, adolescents, indigenous communities and those living in remote areas. Small island developing states also face fiscal constraints and heightened vulnerability to economic and climate shocks, requiring stronger regional cooperation and system-based solutions.
The Caribbean MCO’s management strategy is governed by four principles that together translate the new business model into concrete ways of working:
• Impact-driven : technical expertise is organized in shared multi-country working groups rather than replicated in each country, with enabling functions aligned around UNICEF’s strongest comparative advantages.
• Effective and agile : parallel country ecosystems are replaced by harmonized systems and flexible cross-country staffing, keeping management lean and decisions close to implementation.
• Grounded : regional scale is balanced with national depth through country-specific workplans, Heads of Office in each duty station, and matrix management that anchors authority and accountability at country level.
• People-centered : structural and managerial choices are guided by staff wellbeing, transparency and inclusion, with clear role definitions, meaningful consultation, and continuous investment in learning and development.
The operational expression of this model is the working group model. Rather than replicating similar roles across four separate country offices, technical and operational expertise is organized into 16 thematic and functional working groups, each distributed across different duty stations and each serving the full 12-country MCO — not just its host location. Roles are designed around three organizing principles: shared regional service , meaning every specialist contributes to the wider MCO; complementary expertise , meaning team capabilities reinforce each other rather than repeating the same profile in multiple places; and agile presence , meaning the workforce can be rapidly deployed across countries through travel, surge support or remote modalities in line with evolving needs and priorities. This working group model is the foundation of a fundamentally new way of working for UNICEF in the Caribbean: depth replaces duplication, and shared capacity replaces fragmented country-by-country coverage.
The Education Specialist (Early Childhood Development) is part of the Equitable and resilient services for primary health care, learning and skills working group. This group leads the implementation of the CPD outcome on equitable and resilient services that boost children’s nutrition, mental health, learning and skills, by strengthening health and education systems to deliver integrated PHC, nutrition, MHPSS and quality basic and secondary education for all children and adolescents. Its function is to translate this priority into integrated policy packages, service delivery models and scalable solutions across the subregion, ensuring that equity, inclusion and climate-resilience are embedded in the expansion of health and education services and that socio-emotional learning and future-ready skills are systematically advanced in all 12 countries.
The team is led by the Assistant Representative for Equitable and Resilient Services for Primary Health, Learning and Skills (Belize) and includes seven NOC specialists. The specialist profiles have been defined directly against the CPD outputs under this outcome, so that each post is anchored in a specific strand of work (early learning, foundational learning, policy and public finance, PHC/MHPSS, PHC/nutrition and Early Childhood Development), while together they form a complementary skills mix that covers the full range of expertise required to achieve the intended results. The working group is comprised of the following: Education Specialist (Early Learning) in Belize, Education Specialist (ECD) in Suriname, Education Specialist (Foundational Learning & Skills) in Guyana, Education Specialist (Policy & Budget) in Barbados, Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Mental Health) in Suriname, Health Specialist (Policy & Budget) in Jamaica, and Health Specialist (Primary Health Care & Nutrition) in Barbados.
How can you make a difference ?
The Education Specialist (Early Childhood Development), reports to the Assistant Representative for Equitable and Resilient Services for Primary Health, Learning and Skills, P4., located in Belize, in close day-to day coordination with the in-country Lead in Suriname. The incumbent contributes to the achievement of education results across the Caribbean Multi-Country Programme (MCP) and supports collective action, knowledge exchange, innovation, and cross-country collaboration to advance shared programme priorities and outcomes throughout the Multi-Country Office.
The Education Specialist (Early Childhood Development) provides dedicated technical leadership on early childhood development and nurturing care across the multi-country platform, strengthening ECD as a cross-sectoral function spanning health, nutrition, MHPSS and early learning. The post reinforces the learning and skills agenda beyond the leadership level, working alongside the education specialists in Barbados, Belize and Guyana and the evidence function to address acute gaps and embed ECD indicators into programme design. This position supports children from pregnancy and early childhood through school entry, to be developmentally on track and ready to learn through integrated nurturing-care approaches and equitable access to quality early learning.
Based in Suriname, the position leverages the context and ECD challenges to strengthen UNICEF’s capacity to address critical issues affecting children. Through improved geographical distribution of technical expertise, the Education Specialist (ECD) ensures more equitable and responsive support to high-need country context throughout the region. The Education Specialist (ECD) will work in close coordination with the Education Specialist (Early Learning) and the Health & Nutrition Specialist (Primary Health Care & Nutrition) to address and improve these outputs.
The key functions and accountabilities are:
• Technical Leadership on Early Childhood Development in Education
• Support to ECD Programme Development and Planning
• Programme management, monitoring and delivery of results
• Technical and operational support to programme implementation
• Networking and partnership building
• Innovation, knowledge management and capacity building
This position belongs to the Equitable and Resilient Services for Primary Health, Learning and Skills working group. If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here: NOC Education Specialist (ECD) Suriname.pdf
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
Minimum requirements:
Education: An advanced university degree in one of the following fields is required: education, public administration, public health, nutrition, economics, social sciences, human development, child development, family studies or another relevant technical field.
Work Experience: A minimum of five years of professional experience in programme planning, social development planning and management, in Early Childhood Development related areas is required.
Technical Knowledge and Skills required:
• Strong technical expertise in early childhood development in Education and nurturing care.
• Strong knowledge of evidence-based approaches to improving early childhood development, including early learning, responsive caregiving, parenting support play-based learning, parenting programmes, developmental monitoring, school readiness, integrated ECD service models, referral pathways and ECD/early-learning indicators.
• Understanding of Education-early childhood development systems strengthening and demonstrated ability to translate evidence into policies, strategies and scalable government-led interventions.
• Knowledge of parenting support, responsive caregiving and early stimulation interventions.